1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a token mediation service, and more particularly to systems and methods for using a token mediation service and security tokens to authorize database transactions in a data management system.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Enterprises generally desire to provide authorized users with secure access to protected resources in a user-friendly manner throughout a variety of networks, including the Internet. Although providing secure authentication mechanisms reduces the risks of unauthorized access to protected resources, those authentication mechanisms may become barriers to accessing protected resources.
Users generally desire the ability to change from interacting with one application to another application without regard to authentication barriers that protect each particular system supporting those applications. A user might assume that once he or she has been authenticated by some computer system, the authentication should be valid throughout the user's working session, or at least for a particular period of time, without regard to the various computer architecture boundaries that are almost invisible to the user. Subjecting a user to multiple authentication processes in a given time frame may significantly affect the user's efficiency.
Moreover, maintaining different authorization and authentication credentials, and requiring each application to obtain or validated security credentials for each access by a user slows down network speed, increases network traffic, and requires maintenance by the system administrator, thus significantly affecting the network's efficiency. Further, point-to-point authentication is inefficient and slows down execution of a data request.